


Rear Guard

by bluflamingo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Maria backed up the Avengers, even when they didn't know she was doing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rear Guard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



"Just – whatever you're about to say, tell me it's not going to include the words, 'The Avengers.'"

Maria asks every time. The answer's never the one she wants to hear.

*

"Um, Agent Hill?" 

Maria closes her eye, just for a second, and only because she's got her back to the agent calling her name. She's been on duty for thirty-three hours, and she has a stitched up gash on her fore-arm that she doesn't remember getting. All she wants is to hand over to the after action commander, commandeer a SHIELD vehicle, and fall into bed.

"Agent Hill?"

Clearly, that's not going to happen.

"Yes, Agent Sanderson?" Maria's had years of practice at keeping any emotion out of her voice and off her face, years that don't fail her now. Sanderson's uniform is covered in dust – they all are, they look like something out of a post-apocalypse movie, instead of Tuesday-with-the-Avengers. 

Sanderson winces, and doesn't come within reach of Maria. It takes her a second to realize she's still holding her side-arm. She can't actually remember if she's got any bullets left. That said, she can always beat someone to death with it in an emergency. She doesn't holster it again. "We've had a call patched through via SHIELD command."

"Asking for me?" 

"For Director Fury," Sanderson says. He shifts, throwing up a cloud of dust. It smells of burning sewage, a smell that, until today, Maria couldn't have identified. She's not especially thrilled about that changing.

"Then I suppose you'd better put it through to me."

"Yes, ma'am." Sanderson looks far too relieved for Maria not to ask her next question.

"Who's the caller, Agent Sanderson?"

Sanderson winces again – good thing he's a field operative, and not undercover. "It's the President, ma'am. Of the United States."

There's a loud crash in the background, followed by the sound of tinkling glass, and the Hulk declaring that he smashed. 

"Of course it is," Maria says. Given that she's currently standing in the wreckage of the White House's Rose Garden, she doesn't even bother to be surprised, just taps her headset on.

A voice says, "Hold for the President," and then a second voice says, "Fury, there'd better be a damn good explanation for why I'm watching Captain America on my television, throwing his shield through what looks an awful lot like my bedroom in the Residence."

At least he's not watching Hulk _smash_ what looks an awful lot like his bedroom in the Residence. "This is Deputy Director Hill, Mr President. Director Fury's currently unavailable." By which she means, on a diplomatic visit with Odin and Frigga, because Fury gets to go to other planets and Maria gets to wrangle the aftermath of the Avengers versus the Sewer People of Washington DC. "But I can assure you that Captain America was only acting in your best interests, and those of the government of the United States, in his actions."

The same can't entirely be said about Barton and Stark, but Maria's not saying it unless the President asks.

"Hill. You're the one he sent to wrangle the Appropriations Sub-Committee last quarter."

"Yes, sir."

The President laughs. "I heard all about that. Had to find three new committee members after that meeting."

Maria's a little disappointed – she'd been hoping for at least four. "Thank you, sir."

"Now, tell me what's happened to my White House."

Maria sits down on a low wall, ignoring the on-going thuds in the background, and does exactly that.

*

Maria doesn’t have favourites, because Deputy Directors don't do things like that, but, if she's really pressed on the issue, she might admit a slight fondness for Barton and Romanoff over the other Avengers. Only because the three of them and Coulson have been SHIELD together for the better part of a decade. And maybe a little because Barton's got a sarcastic sense of humour, and Romanoff's taught her more than she thought possible about defending herself and taking out her enemies. 

Or maybe just because the two of them and the choices they make in battle make sense to her in a way that not even Rogers, who's military of a kind, does. 

All of which comes down to the three of them, in the middle of Times Square, surrounded by metallic monsters that shoot lasers.

"Lasers," Barton shouts, over the noise of something exploding under the force of a laser beam. "Who the hell equips their evil monsters with lasers?"

Maria slams a new magazine into her weapon and fires at a robot's eye, sparks flying in all directions when she makes contact. "You'd rather it was shooting bullets? Or fire?"

"Lasers are so –" Barton's bow twangs and a monster grunts in something disturbingly like pain – "Pedestrian. If you're building killer robots, what's wrong with something more interesting?"

"You want to maybe focus on fighting them off first?" Maria ducks and rolls away from an incoming laser beam, comes to her feet to see Barton firing over Romanov's kneeling form. "All okay?"

"All good," Romanov shouts back. She bangs out a handful of further shots, then calls, "Back me up?"

Barton looks away from firing explosive arrows into the robots' eyes – Maria won't ever get used to watching him hit perfect targets with barely a glance toward them. "Tell me you're not planning what I think you're planning."

Romanov's already holstered her gun, and her Widow's bites are flashing electricity at her wrists. She smiles, all teeth. "I'm always planning what you think I'm planning."

Maria double-checks Romanov's line of sight and fires. Three robots turn in her direction, which is alarming in a distant way she can't afford to think about right now – doesn't have time to think about, because Romanov's scaling a robot, like she's running up a hill, hands tight on its neck, sparks flying as the robot crashes down to the ground. 

Maria fires a final bullet into its head, just missing Romanov as she uses it to spring the distance to the next robot. "Nice," she says.

Romanov's turned away, so Maria can only hear the smile in her voice as she says, "You too."

*

Killer robots aside, Maria doesn't go out with the Avengers very often. Instead, she's the one who sits in on briefings and leads them through debriefings at the end. All of which means that, more often than not, she finds herself in a room with Captain Rogers, talking plans.

Considering she regularly finds herself standing in front of Director Fury and essentially asking, "But why?" doing the same with Rogers is a surprisingly frustrating experience.

"There's six of you," she says, not for the first time, spinning the warehouse blueprint to position to bring the front door closer. "That's a bottle neck right there."

Rogers doesn't sulk or cross his arms or sigh, not like the others, but she can still feel his disapproval, his rock solid knowledge that he's right and she's wrong. It's annoying, and made more so by how she knows it has nothing to do with her, nothing to do with her gender, that it's not about him doubting her abilities and competence. He just knows he's right, and for a brief moment, she's filled with sympathy for Fury, back in the early days when she was just like Rogers, sure that she was right and Fury was wrong, and so damn frustrated at him for not seeing things her way.

"We don't know what they're cooking up in there," Rogers says, like she didn't read the same briefing packet he did. "Any distraction runs the risk they'll use whatever it is on those forces."

"And heading straight in runs the risk they'll use it on you, and the whole thing will be over before it even starts."

"Not like this. We can take them down, all together, before they make any kind of move."

There's something – just for a second, there's something different about him. Like watching Captain America slip away, so all that's left is Steve Rogers, trying to do what he still doesn't fully know how to do and trying to do it so no-one else can tell he doesn't. Trying not to lose anyone.

Maria knows the stories. Everyone at SHIELD does, and she wonders if maybe that's stopped them from pointing out that it's impossible to do this and not lose anyone. That trying for that means setting everyone up to fail, and it's better to hurt and succeed than to feel safe and fail.

He's still young, even after seventy years on ice, and Maria finds that, like everyone else, she doesn't want to be the one to throw grey reality over his black-and-white heroism.

None of which means that she'll let him risk everyone for a plan she sees a major flaw in.

"How about splitting the Avengers and the SHIELD forces, half of each on the two approaches?" she offers. If she was someone else, this is where she'd smile, lean in, say, 'Do it for me, Steve, I worry.'

She's not anyone else, though, and when Rogers nods assent, she knows she wouldn't want to be.


End file.
